Ninja vs Ninja

Another new comic day.. Another DISAPPOINTING new comic day.

Flashpoint is turning out to be a pretty much “dud” event with too many unnecessary tie-ins. With the exception of the main book, the rest are pretty much forgettable and as far as I can see now, inconsequential. So far, all the characters are behaving as out of character as they possibly could from their counterparts in the DC regular-verse. Each new tie in brings more questions than answers… Will dwell on this for a while before I post any reviews.

In the meantime, my new work: Ninja vs Ninja starring the ever lovely Lady Bullseye with the hard luck Matt Murdock aka Daredevil…

For this piece, I was trying to recreate the feel of one of those old school fight posters with an aged feel…

Not sure if it works though…

Green Lantern SUCKS!!!

Or how Marvel is kicking DC’s bloated ass in the cinemas when it comes to earning brownie points from fan boys’.

To be honest, out of all the summer comic book based blockbusters, Green Lantern was the one that I was most eagerly anticipating.

And what do I get? An overly loud, grossly pointless, highly forgettable and obscenely disappointing run-of-the-mill Hollywood swill.

Looking over at exhibit B… We have X-Men: First Class that I expected to Suck. I mean, come on… They destroyed all notions of conformance with the comic books by putting Havok, Banshee and Darwin(??!!!) on Xavier’s first team; they mixed and matched (what they think are) the coolest mutants to put in the show, changing the gender and race (Angel) or color and name (Azazel/Nightcrawler) when they have to; worst of all, we have a non-bald Prof X…and that is just wrong.

Yet… in spite of all that, First Class appeared to be stronger of the two films. At the very least. it was the one that I enjoyed more…

So what happened?

I put it down to one word: Simplicity…

I believe DC’s characters have the richer history (or non history) when compared to Marvel’s…

Probably because of this, they tried to dump EVERY Obscure Comic Book History Info into this one film, sowing seeds for what they hope would be taken up in the inevitable sequel (Hello Sinestro). But since it is impossible to cram 50 years of history into one two hour film, they started taking creative “liberties” and changing comic book canon. The alternative explanation is that the writers are too lazy to read through all  50 years of comic and came up with a script based on their own understanding.

In spite of all this, they seem to expect:
A) non fans to follow
B) fans to not complain that they got the history wrong
C) everyone else to not be confused to a point where they give up

Case in point… The villains.

For First Class, we have ex Nazi Kevin Bacon, I mean Sebastian Shaw leading a bunch of evil mutant to incite a nuclear war to hasten the growth of mutanity. There are side plots.. But they are simple and does not distract from the main storyline

For Green Lantern… We have *drum roll* PARALLAX that is possessed by Krona (???!!! Or is it the other way round?) and Hector Hammond. I am a Green Lantern fan and I am hard-pressed if you want me to tell you the whole history of Parallax and Krona in two hours. It is simply too complicated and you reeeeaaally have to follow canon to understand it. YET DC tried VERY unsuccessfully to do that amidst the narrative to flesh out Hal Jordan and the rest of the Corp in that same time frame. Tall order… Is it any wonder they crashed and burned?

Also, a bit of fan service doesn’t hurt either…

Even if it is to tell people to go f*ck themselves…

New Deviant…

I finally succumbed and got myself a deviant art account…

I didn’t really mean to, Deviant Art was one of those sites that I used to scoff at… I expected lots of creepy otakus and a lot of juvenile arty farty type that are slightly too full of themselves.

BUT I was bored and decided to take a look around the site. There are some SERIOUSLY awesome artworks in there….They are among a lot of thrashy stuff.. but they are DEFINITELY there..

So I signed up, and for the first time, I debuted a piece on deviantart and not here first.

It’s a piece I called “Invisible Invulnerability”  which shows Sue Storm of the Fantastic Four (or Future Foundation, whichever way you want to cut it) with her force field up. Was always fascinated by Sue Storm because she is supposed to be invisible, yet have a super strong forcefield. Trying to capture this duality in this piece with her battling with fire.

And I suppose it’s the way I feel about my presence on deviantart too.

Rest of my works can be seen here: theflamingskull.deviantart.com

Bullseye!!

So… New comic book day came and gone.. and sadly, there were no real comic books of note this time round. Both the Flashpoint and Fear Itself issues for this week did not advance the storyline of the respective tent pole events much.

I would even go so far as to say that “Flashpoint: Grodd of War” and “Flashpoint: Wonder Woman and the Furies” were kind of “meh” and spent entire issues fleshing out things, although critical to the main storyline, that can be covered in a few pages.

On the Fear Itself front, the stand out issue for this week have to be the Invincible Iron Man #505, but that’s no surprise as Matt Fraction’s creative team has been stellar for the past year or so… True, there’s nothing stand outish for this issue, but it foreshadows future events, which are kind of exciting for me… I like it when the chips for the heroes are down and things seem hopeless beyond words… That’s Invincible Iron Man #505.

One item on my pull list this week was the TPB for the Immortal Iron Fist: Escape from the Eighth City. IIF is a title that I trade wait because I just don’t find it worthwhile to buy individual issues of it. I was bowled away by the artwork. So much so that I was inspired to make this:

Yes, it’s Lady Bullseye, who is more of Daredevil’s Rogue. But I like her oriental appeal.

Was going for a paint brush-y, chinese calligraphy-y look with this piece. I have to admit, I was more than a little inspired by the art style on the Street Fighter 4 series.

Only thing is, I can’t seemed to be able to get the paint brush feel down pat yet…

In a Flash

It’s New Comics Day again!

Really excited about the latest installments of Flashpoint, in spite of myself…

Decided to do up a piece on The Flash….

Slightly different from what I’ve done previously…

The thing about the Flash is all about his speed… Trying very hard to capture his kinetic nature.

It’s also one of my first time experimenting with a non black background. There’s a lot more to consider with regard to the color scheme to make sure that everything “goes”…

There’s also a lot more modeling to be done then the usual works…

Fear the Flashpoint Itself

WARNING: Images contained in this post contain MAJOR spoilers for Flashpoint and Fear Itself!!

The last comic week saw the release of the latest issues in the Big 2’s tent-pole summer events.

Flashpoint #2 for DC – which sees Barry Allen making sense of Thomas Wayne Batman (AKA Red Eyed Casino Bats), and trying to kickstart his Flash powers by means of… ermm… electric chair suicide?

and

Fear Itself #3 for Marvel – which sees Bucky Cap and the Avengers FINALLY confronting Sin and Blitzkreig USA after THREE months of hemming, emoting and hawing…

The result of all these events?

Is it me? Or is there something oddly similar about the two images above?

And… how misleading would these pictures be?

My take:

Barry Allen – Being one of only two people aware of the “original” DC universe, it’s unlikely that DC will kill him off… Unless Booster Gold suddenly acquire Flash like super speed and becomes the surprise Protagonist of Flashpoint, Barry will probably have a “rebirth” with speed powers returned at the start of Flashpoint #3

Bucky Cap: Here’s the dootzy. We’ve seen Steve Cap getting ready to leave the command post and take his place “as a soldier in the battlefield” in Fear Itself #3. It seems the perfect opportunity for Marvel to reinstate him as the ONE Captain America in the Marvelverse after trying Bucky out for a year. It would also be just in time for the movie release of Captain America: The First Avenger. Newcomers to the Marvelverse via the movie would not be confused by a different Cap than the one featured in the movie. Also, the crossover is not called Fear BUCKY itself…

There is one small problem though… People LOVE Bucky Cap.

Ok, I LOVE Bucky Cap. Guns, metal suit with American Flag pointing towards his crotch and all… He’s conflicted and flawed, with a hazy and mysterious past that had not fully been explored yet. He’s not the perfect, blond, all-American Blue eyed Captain America that Steve Rogers was. In other words.. he is more INTERESTING.

So, if you are listening to me, Marvel… PLEASE DON’T KILL OFF BUCKY CAP!!

Haven’t we seen this before?

“Everything you know will change in a Flash”

The DCU is set for a major revamp after their summer blockbuster event, Flashpoint. There had already been rumors that all current in-continuity DC titles will be scrubbed and 52 new titles will be relaunched with issue #1.

I am not sure what my stand is on this is, at the moment… On one hand I think it is a potentially bold move by DC to capture new readers who would not be bogged down by little things such as “continuity”. On the other hand, I think Continuity rules, and the necessities of capitalism has bitch slapped fanboys like myself who had doggedly followed every “relaunch” the Big 2 goes through.

But hey… it’s just me… and I’ve been wrong before… This could prove to be a launch pad for new and exciting stories with a modern sensibility… Just look at Spider Man after Brand New Day…

Anyway, Flashpoint started spiritedly enough with these cryptic messages in Booster Gold…

Along with the Flashpoint teaser montage below, I think it was a fair prelude of what was to come in Flashpoint.

So far, we’ve seen a couple of big reveals about the world of Flashpoint.

#SPOILER ALERT#

We know that Bruce Wayne was the one who was killed in Crime Alley, and because of this, Thomas Wayne became evil red eyed Batman.

We’ve learned that the Flashpoint World is without a Superman, and Cyborg, ultimate B-Lister got to step off the bench and became THE hero of this new world. Boy, you know your world is screwed when you look in the sky and see a Cyborg dropping towards you. Does he even fly?

We’ve discovered that an all out war between the seemingly villainous Aquaman-led Atlanteans and Wonder Woman’s fury driven Amazons caused most of the world to descend into madness. The war climaxed in the sinking of Western Europe – probably taking along with it the world’s last beer and wine reserve… No wonder everyone is angry.

#END OF SPOILERS#

All in all, it seems like a well stretched out Elseworlds  or “What if”s event, except for one thing… it’s set in the “Original” DC Universe… whatever that means anymore.

Does this sound familiar to other long time comic fans?

Yup… Flashpoint reminds me of Marvel’s Uber hit, the Age of Apocalypse where Prof X was killed in the past by his son Legion. He never formed the X-Men in time to defeat Apocalypse and hence a future was created where Mutants ruled through Apocalypse’s paradigm of “Survival of the Fittest”.

To a (very young) me, the series was the bee’s knees as it shows how one small event in the past can lead to a whole new set of possibilities and drastically different outcomes. A comic book lesson in Butterfly Effect.

So far, there’s been no mention of what caused the huge changes in the DC Universe.

All evidences so far point towards the Reverse Flash altering Barry Allen’s past, and in doing so, changed the course of history. At the moment, it seemed that there are too many changes in the current situation to have been the cascading effect brought on by a singular event.

But you never know… Personally, I have faith in the story telling abilities of Geoff Johns to introduce a twist to the assumption that Professor Zoom is the man causing the Flashpoint timeline. (I hope) the late release date of “Flashpoint: Reverse Flash”  would support my theory and introduce a (MAJOR) twist in the tale. I am personally stoke to see which is the milestone “singular” event that brought on this new future…

Boy, would it suck if the cause of Flashpoint is just one of Flash’s Rogues running around, changing EVERY key events of the Past just so he can screw around with Barry Allen.